NDA to rename UPA schemes after Hindutva icons

This Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked the end of the Nehruvian era with his emphasis on phasing out the Planning Commission. Now, his dispensation has taken up another task that could lead to the demise of Nehruvian politics and cut to size the very family behind it – the Nehru-Gandhi family.If insiders are to be believed, the NDA government is moving to rename about a dozen central schemes bearing Nehru-Gandhi names. The babus have been instructed to make a list of icons, ignored thus far by previous dispensations, who could lend their names to government schemes. “Earlier, there was an unwritten law not to go beyond the ‘Family’ except in some exceptional cases.Now it’s different,” said a Delhi-based bureaucrat who did not want to be named. The first hint of change was apparent last month when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the 2014-15 Budget. Unlike the dominant practice, the names of the Nehru-Gandhi family – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi – were conspicuous by their absence in the speech. Jaitley did not invoke them even once while announcing new schemes, programmes or institutions.Instead, one saw the emergence of a set of names largely ignored in post-Independence India. Jaitley proposed `500 crore for the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Rural Electrification Programme, earlier named after Rajiv Gandhi. Upadhyay was one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP.Jaitley then invoked the likes of Jayaprakash Narayan, who successfully took on Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, as he proposed to set up a Centre of Excellence in Madhya Pradesh after him, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya for a teaching programme, and Syama Prasad Mookerjee for an urban renewable mission earlier named after Nehru.advertisementThe first round of rechristening went in favour of right-wing stalwarts like Mookerjee and Upad-The Centre is mulling renaming about a dozen UPA schemes. The govt may change the names of Nehru-Gandhi schemes with those of RSS and BJP’s ideologues such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay (from left to right), Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Madan Mohan Malviya; social reformer Jaiprakash Narayan. hyay. And if insiders are to be believed, the national highway programme is to be named after Atal Bihari Vajpayee.But the list isn’t confined to the right. The bureaucrat said, “The mandate is to make a list of those who have been deliberately ignored for the sake of the ‘Family’ and the names go beyond Sangh circles. More so because the BJP doesn’t have enough icons of its own.”The sheer absence of such icons has forced the BJP to appropriate those who don’t necessarily belong to it. This explains why the likes of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, B.R. Ambedkar (both Congress leaders), Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia (both socialists) are being given so much importance in the BJP’s scheme of things.An RTI query in 2012 revealed that 12 central and 52 state schemes, 28 sports tournaments and trophies, 19 stadiums, five airports and ports, 98 educational institutions, 51 awards, 15 fellowships, 15 national sanctuaries and parks, 39 hospitals and medical institutions, 37 institutions, chairs and festivals and 74 roads, buildings and places are named after three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.Almost half the nearly 60 institutions and schemes run by the Centre are named after the Nehru-Gandhi family. Of these, 16 are named after Rajiv, eight after Indira and three after Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi had only four named after him.